The Central issue

About this series

As Naperville Unit District 203 gears up for a possible referendum in February, it is seeking community input on three possible plans to renovate its facilities. The Daily Herald will take an in-depth look each Friday at the three facilities or programs it has deemed priorities. Last week we examined issues at Mill Street Elementary. Next week we will explore issues in the early childhood program.

From a shortage of classrooms to a shortage of power for technology, Naperville Central High School has a laundry list of facility concerns.

The school's age and lack of space have earned it a place at the top of Naperville Unit District 203's priority list for improvements.

The district studied all 21 of its schools and has put together three options for addressing the most pressing needs.

Solutions for Central, 440 W. Aurora Ave., range from $6 million to $140 million, but the district would need voters' approval for the costlier options.

Problems

Built in 1950, Central has since been expanded five times, usually with several additions each time. However, roughly 70 percent of the facility was constructed more than 38 years ago.

Principal Jim Caudill said space continues to be a concern for the school -- namely, there aren't enough classrooms and many of the existing classrooms are too small to accommodate the school's enrollment, which hovers around 3,100 students.

This figure, however, is expected to drop. A demographic study found that if conditions occur as expected, enrollment will decline annually until it reaches 2,554 in 2016-17, followed by a slight increase the following year. Caudill said the decline could ease some but not all of the school's concerns.

Currently to deal with the space crunch, English classes meet in the library resource center or in mobile classrooms, business classrooms have been converted into space for multi-needs students and three engineering classes share classroom space.

Caudill said small classrooms are not conducive to the school's goal of having students spending the majority of time doing hands-on work.

Another concern that comes up often is science labs, which have only six tables to accommodate an average of 28 to 30 students per class, again reducing the amount of hands-on work they can do.

"When you put five people back at a lab station to work on one experiment ... some people work more, (some students) take notes and God knows what the others are doing," Caudill said. "What you need is probably eight to nine stations here so you never have more than three kids with hands-on (projects)."

He has said all rooms are full four periods of the day. The school has had to find any open space for students to work. In the case of social workers, they lead group counseling sessions on the floor of the auditorium lobby.

Officials also estimate the school is about 100 to 150 seats short during each lunch period, and washrooms are at a premium. In the flat wing that serves 1,500 students, there is only one female and one male student washroom.

Outdoors, the squeeze comes by way of athletic fields. In 2009, the school will lose some of its practice fields when its lease of cemetery property expires.

One of its other athletic facilities, its field house -- which is also one of its newer additions -- has its own issues.

"The field house is only 15 years old, but it can go tomorrow. It's a disaster," Caudill said. "We have so many problems with that floor. It's only really playable for badminton. Other than that, it's too slick. We've had injuries down there."

The age of the building has also presented a number of concerns and administrators expect the building to need $18 million for ongoing maintenance over the next 10 to 12 years.

In addition to wear and tear, the age of the school has resulted in it having an infrastructure that can't support the school's technology needs. Too many computers, SMARTBoards or blenders running at one time will blow fuses.

Safety and security also are concerns with the current condition of the building, Caudill said. The school has 47 entry points, no sprinklers on the upper levels and handicapped accessibility issues.

Options

The district has formulated three options for dealing with facility issues.

Plan A is based on the recommendations of its facilities committee, which spent six months studying the buildings. The plan calls for a $72 million major renovation to Central that would include science labs, technology, reducing the number of entrances, locating core subjects together, synthetic turf for the football field and enlarging the kitchen to provide hot lunch to elementary schools in the district.

This plan also calls for an $11 million renovation to Mill Street Elementary; building an $11 million early childhood center; addressing issues at Naperville North such as the depth of the pool, locker rooms, traffic and synthetic turf on the football field; and addressing security issues at Prairie and Ranch View elementaries and Washington Junior High.

Plan B is the least expensive option at $22 million to $46 million. Roughly $6 million to $30 million of this would go to Central to do minor renovations focused on science labs and installing synthetic turf.

This plan would give Mill Street Elementary a $1 million renovation and redraws some of the school's boundaries. It also includes $11 million to build an early childhood center. North's pool and pool locker room still would be addressed and it would have synthetic turf installed. Security would be taken care of at Ranch View, Prairie and Washington.

Plan C is a $158 million to $168 million option that calls for a complete rebuild of Naperville Central for about $130 million to $140 million. This likely would be part of a larger project to reorganize the city and park district groups that utilize the Caroline Martin Mitchell property where the high school is located.

The rest of this option follows Plan A.

Taxpayer impact

If the district plans to spend more than $59 million, it will need a tax increase via a referendum that likely would occur Feb. 5. Therefore plans A and C -- which call for either a major renovation or a complete rebuild of Central -- would each require a hike in property taxes.

Plan A would cost the owner of a $331,117 home (as of 2006) an additional $76 a year for the next 20 years. Plan C would cost that same homeowner $187 to $206 more a year for 20 years.

Through community engagement meetings and school tours, the district is seeking feedback from residents as to which of the three plans they would support. Residents can still tour Central at 1 p.m. today or 10 a.m. Tuesday.

For more information or to view the district's presentation online, visit www.naperville203.org and click on "Touch the Future."